With two openly gay politicians, MPP Kathleen Wynne and MPP Glen Murray, vying for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party, some activists see an opportunity to force more gay issues into the campaign.
“It will be an opportunity for these candidates to speak to the issues that affect our community,” says Nick Mulé, chair of Queer Ontario. “And it will be possibly a bit of a test to see how far they are willing to go in terms of addressing the kind of issues that we identify as being important for ourselves.”
Ontario’s education system and, in particular, the Catholic school system, are high on Queer Ontario’s list of things that need to be changed.
“Pastoral guidelines continue to exist in Catholic schools that basically denigrate queer youth — and that is a problem,” Mulé says, adding that funding for Catholic schools must end.
But both Wynne and Murray have dismissed talk of de-funding the separate school board.
Mulé finds this “unfortunate.”
“Three provinces have already dropped religion from their education systems – those being Manitoba, Quebec and Newfoundland and the same can be done here in Ontario.”
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